Bike Swap
Yesterday was the Seattle Bike Swap. I split a table with iBOBs John Speare and Mark VandeKamp. It was a pretty successful swap for me, I sold off all of my singlespeed and fixed gear stuff,my mountain bike frame,and a bunch of small parts. I still have more stuff (mostly 406mm tires and wheels, maybe a couple of panniers) to sell off on eBay, but my spare parts pile is looking pretty good. I didn’t buy too much either, just a bunch of cantilever brakes, a Ritchey 110/74 crank, and a seatpost.
Swap is the bicycle highlight of the year for me. It is the one time when almost all of the bike geeks around Seattle get together in one spot and chat about bicycles. The number of interesting to me parts is dwindling, but I think that is because the only mainstream parts that I really liked were mountain bike drivetrain and brake components from the early to mid 90s and what would have made it to a swap has already been sold.
John Speare and I learned that we’d be better off selling full bikes than frames and parts. He had a really cool Terry-like Novara 48cm frame and wheels that I thought for sure would find a buyer, but it didn’t. It is now in my basement if that short description piques the interest of anyone. The “Tandem from Hell” didn’t sell until the last minute, but it got a lot of looks. This was an early 80s Santana Soverign frame that someone had added a Softride beam to then repainted and wrote “Tandem from Hell” on it. An interesting bike and I thought it would find a buyer (Santana tandem frames for $50 aren’t very common) but it ended up going out at firesale prices as we left the swap.
This leads to the best moment of the swap: John Speare sells the tandem to Joe for $25.Thirty secondslater someone else walks up and asks about it and Joe realizes he doesn’t really want it and resells it to the new guy for $20. Then realizes he just lost $5 in about 1 minute. It was much funnier in person.
We had my Kogswell Porteur prototype on display in the booth and it got a lot of attention. Some folks hoped it was for sale,a lot knew it was going to be there and just came by to check it out. I think Kogswell will be pretty successful with this bike.
I wonder what I’ll be selling next year?
alex